


(plant your hope with good seeds)

by HearJessRoar



Category: Julie and The Phantoms (TV)
Genre: Emotional Hurt/Comfort, F/M, Gen, Platonic Cuddling, Platonic Relationships, julie just loves her boys so much, just a smidge its fine
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-10-26
Updated: 2020-10-26
Packaged: 2021-03-08 17:13:36
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,846
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/27210259
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/HearJessRoar/pseuds/HearJessRoar
Summary: don't cover yourself with thistle and weedsJulie falls a little bit in love with all of them.
Relationships: Alex & Julie Molina & Luke Patterson & Reggie, Julie Molina/Luke Patterson
Comments: 56
Kudos: 553
Collections: Kelly's Picks





	(plant your hope with good seeds)

Julie falls a little bit in love with all of them. It’s impossible not to.

Not the way she falls for Luke, not like that, but-

They’re her boys, and the things she would do to protect them scare her sometimes, these silly, sweet, annoying, wonderful boys who support her and love her right back. 

Sometimes she thinks about Caleb, and how she’d tear that club of his to the ground with her teeth if he tried to lay another finger on them.

 _how far we’ve come,_ she thinks to herself, using Alex’s stomach as a pillow while Luke’s hands are buried in her hair, braiding messy little plaits that’ll be impossible to unknot later as he lays stretched out on Alex’s other side. Reggie has his legs tossed over hers, plucking away at his unplugged bass while the rain pitter patters outside, splattering the garage windows in cold, fat droplets. Alex is dozing off, or at least as close as he can get these days, and Julie is about three seconds from nodding off herself.

“I really love you guys,” she mumbles. Reggie knocks his foot against hers, leather boot to rubber sneaker.

“We love you, too, Jules.” He says, and Julie smiles softly.

She doesn’t remember actually dropping off to sleep, but when she wakes up, Alex is the only one who hasn’t moved. Reggie’s red flannel has been draped over her chest, and Luke’s denim duster is sprawled over her legs. Neither of them seem to still be in the studio.

Her heart swells with affection.

_these sweet, sweet goofs_

Luke’s hands in her hair have been replaced by Alex’s, and he’s dutifully trying to untangle the mess Luke has made of her curls. He’s doing his best considering he’s still flat on his back, and Julie rolls over to look at him.

“Where’d everybody go?” she asks, voice rough with post-nap drowsiness. She yawns despite herself.

“Reggie went to go see what Carlos was up to, Luke went to his parents’ place,” Alex says. He boops her nose and Julie blinks. “You snore.”

Swatting at him, she protests, “I do not!”

“Do so.”

She sits up, grabs for a pillow off the couch, and smacks it down onto his face. “I! Do! Not!” she punctuates each word with the pillow and Alex comes up laughing, trying to block her playful swings with his hands.

“I give, I give!” he says, ducking out of her reach. Julie lowers the pillow, calling a truce as she tosses it back to the couch cushions.

She picks up the flannel and the duster from where they’ve fallen to the wayside, and folds up the duster carefully, setting it on the coffee table. Reggie’s flannel she slips over her shoulders, and slides her arms through the sleeves.

Normally she’d jump at the chance to steal Luke’s clothes, but the garage isn’t quite cool enough to justify a denim coat.

Besides, Reggie’s flannel smells better. Sorry Luke.

Julie can’t help pulling the collar to her nose. Whatever cologne Reggie had been using twenty five years ago, he still smells like today, and it’s really nice.

It smells like _safe._

They all do.

Luke’s stuff is ingrained with Irish Spring soap, which isn’t _bad,_ not at all. Clean and simple. He’d told her once, ever so shyly, that it was the only soap he could afford after he’d run away from home. She understands.

And Alex smells like Bath and Body Works Honeysuckle, which Julie will never not tease him for. He always hunches up his shoulders and says, “It’s my sister’s-” which would be a lot sadder if Julie didn’t know he was lying about it.

The body wash, not the sister. She knows he has a sister out there somewhere. She also knows that the whole scent set was a present from Luke and Reggie and Bobby, and that they’d saved for a month before Alex’s birthday for it.

She stretches her arms above her head, the too-big cuffs of Reggie’s shirt falling all the way down to her elbows as she does so. She cracks her neck and gets to her feet, Alex pushing himself up onto the couch behind her.

Julie grabs her phone off the coffee table, and has to suppress a snort when she sees that Luke has changed her lockscreen again.

They’d posed with her while she was sleeping, Reggie giving the camera a wide smile while Luke holds the phone and sticks his tongue out at her. Alex’s hand is the only part of him in the shot, throwing a blurry peace sign right over her face. Julie regrets teaching them how to work her phone as she rolls her eyes.

She changes her lockscreen back, but keeps the picture.

Julie snags her journal from the piano and drops down beside Alex on the sofa, flipping to a particularly tricky lyric that's been bothering her. "How would you do the beat for this?" she asks, tapping the page. "I can't make the words fit the rhythm in my head right."

Alex takes the journal and thinks for a minute, his tongue between his teeth. He stomps out a couple of beats on the floor, each one ending prematurely as he puzzles it out.

"Or...you could take out this 'and' and change it entirely," he mutters. Julie takes her journal back and hums it with his suggestion. It does sound better, and she scratches it out. 

Alex claps out the basic beat and she sings the line, both of them grinning.

"That's gonna sound amazing when it's finished, Jules."

She beams at him.

She'd thought that she could never stand to be called that ever again in her life.

 _you're my precious Jules, because you're my jewel, light of my life_ -

She'd been too sleepy to feel the bittersweet melancholy when Reggie had said it earlier, too comfortable and _safe safe safe_ to feel the gentle pang in her chest.

Alex sees her smile waver and is immediately on guard for her. "You okay?"

Julie nods, too fast too quick. The rain has not let up outside and the dull roar fills her ears as she carefully, so carefully sets her lyrics journal on the table. "Yeah. My mom used to call me Jules, is all."

"...oh. We'll stop, I'll tell the guys we can't-"

"No!" she blurts, grabbing for his hands. "Please don't. Even my dad doesn't use it as much anymore, he doesn't want to upset me," she swallows, suddenly a little teary. "But you guys make me feel so _loved_ when you say it. Like when she said it."

Alex breaks her grip on his wrists and pulls her into a tight hug. Julie sniffles, and has the fleeting, heartbreaking thought that she pities the poor girl that lost this boy as a big brother twenty five years ago, because Alex gives _the best hugs ever,_ Flynn forgive her.

"Everybody still walks on eggshells around me," she says into Alex’s collar. "I feel like I spent more time comforting people over my grief than I did actually grieving."

Alex rubs her back, soothing little motions through Reggie’s borrowed shirt. "People are uncomfortable with other people being sad," he says. "And it isn't fair, because then you have to tell other people that you're okay so they don't get all weird about you not being okay."

It's not the most flowery way to state it, but he's put into words what she's felt for the past year.

She takes a deep breath, Honeysuckle all around her, and sighs. "You get it."

Alex nods. "I get it."

The couch dips behind her and a second pair of arms snake around her waist, a chin coming to rest on her shoulder.

"I get it, too," Reggie's voice is uncharacteristically quiet by her ear. She untangles a hand and reaches back to pat his cheek and she can feel him smile. She knows that he _does_ get it, even if no one will tell her exactly why he jumps when someone shuts a door too loudly, won't tell her why he's so attached to her wonderful dad. 

They don't need to.

Julie isn't stupid.

"Nice shirt," he says.

“Hm, thanks. You’re never getting it back.” she teases. 

Reggie makes an offended noise and digs his fingers into her sides, tickling her as she squeals and rears back from Alex, trying to squirm away. “Noooooo,” she whines, giggling in between breaths. She’s managed to crawl off the sofa, and roll underneath the coffee table to the safety of the other side, but Reggie is still waggling his fingers at her threateningly, offset by the big goofy grin on his face. Alex looks put-upon, but she can see him smirking too, and knows he isn’t going to save her.

The unexpected and overwhelming scent of Irish Spring reaches her, and Julie suddenly leaves the ground, hefted over a shoulder like a sack of potatoes. She shrieks again, nearly hitting Luke in the face with her flailing arms as she startles.

“This is how you treat your savior?” he asks, ducking. Julie’s heart pounds in her ribs and she’s pretty sure he can tell, but Luke, bless him, doesn’t tease her for it this time.

“Reggie’s bullying me!” she declares, looking backwards to stick her tongue out at her bassist. Reggie does it right back, with moose antler gestures for good measure.

“Reg, you’re grounded,” Luke says, and Julie can feel his shoulder shaking under her stomach with suppressed laughter. His arms are locked behind the backs of her knees and she’s starting to feel tossed around today. 

But she’s glad that this is what Luke’s come home to. Seeing his parents always leaves him a little hangdog, not that she can blame him.

She’s still the only one who can touch them. Sometimes they’re visible to other people now, and they have to be careful not to let the hologram cover get blown. It’s been hard for Luke especially, not to let his parents see him, to try to control his visibility so he doesn’t startle them into their own early graves.

But he’s dealing with it, and the fact that he’s the touchy-feeliest out of all of them has meant that she’s been on the receiving end of more hugs than she can count while he’s dealing with it. He’s always got his hand on her back or her shoulder, and while it makes her heart race there’s no way that Julie could ever mind that he does it. It’s just how Luke is.

And maybe Julie is kind of selfish, she thinks as Luke spins her around and drops her back on her feet to the floor. He shifts so his arms are wrapped around her waist protectively, doing the “I’m watching you,” gesture at Reggie, who just keeps grinning.

Yeah, a little selfish, she admits it.

Because she’s tiniest bit glad that they’re still just her boys for now. She isn’t quite ready to share them with the world just yet.

**Author's Note:**

> this is a writing exercise that got away from me this morning so i thought id share it
> 
> pls comment it's a little different than my usual stuff i wanna know if it's any good

**Works inspired by this one:**

  * [[podfic] (plant your hope with good seeds)](https://archiveofourown.org/works/27221539) by [steepedinwords](https://archiveofourown.org/users/steepedinwords/pseuds/steepedinwords)




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